I am up on Amber LaBau's Blog today to discuss So I have recently posted a few
layouts with older scanned photos – back in the day when digital wasn’t even
imagined. I am fortunate that I do have lots of amazing family photos and
I have become the defacto family historian. This makes me happy because I love
old photos – but I definitely do not love flatbed scanners! I know that they
are best for the most fragile photos – but I don’t have the luxury of always
using one when I am visiting extended family. I have been using one app
on my iPhone – PicScanner but I wanted to see if there was something better out
there that I wasn’t using. I have a giant stack from my Aunt’s house and
I wanted to make sure I was using the best tool.
First, just using my standard
camera on my iPhone 6S + here are a few photos that I will be testing with 3
apps that I choose - PicScanner, Google PhotoScan and Photomyne. I
learned a lot about each one - and its pluses and minuses. These are
iPhone apps except for Google Photo Scan but there are similar ones available
in the Google Play Store.
As you can see the photos are in
decent shape, but the paper scrapbook is in terrible condition.
So the first one I looked at was
PicScanner. It is the one I have used before - but it definitely has some
features which are good and some not so good.
One nice feature is that it won't
take a photo until you get a nicely squared photo, i.e. not too much distortion
as your taking the photos. It takes a few seconds to get the image in
focus but it can give you a balanced image. One drawback of PicScanner is that
it wants to "crop" your image for you - and sometimes the crops are
really weird! There is a way to save the full size image, however saving the
image without automatic cropping takes several steps. They could
definitely improve that function.
But one super nice feature is the
options for saving and sharing. You can even share directly to Facebook. The
latest version also allows for automatic iCloud storage which older versions
did not.
Next I tried the Google Photo
Scan app. It was very easy to start to use the app - there is a quick
tutorial to get started. It uses a unique tool to reduce the glare on scanned
photos. You center the phone over the image and then move to each of the
four corners (the white circles). Then the google app overlays the 4 images to
remove the glare.
This is how the final version
looks on your phone. Not too many options here - basic cropping and two
saving options - Camera Roll or Google Photos. Again there is some
automatic cropping that occurs in the app, but the results are good.
Finally, I tried Photomyne.
I don't know about you but I have seen this one advertised
"everywhere"! The advantage of this app is that it allows for quick
photo taking and scanning. There is a Pro version available which allows for
unlimited cloud storage of your scans.
I took these with just a few
clicks - no need to adjust the alignment or to take multiple images of the same
photos. In fact I took these 5 in less time that it took me to do the 1 example
above. The app does also do some automatic cropping and color adjustments
without the ability to reduce or eliminate those changes (at least in the free
version...).
I was fairly happy with the
results of all three trials. Each app does a good job of scanning with their
own pluses and minuses for cropping and storage.I hope that you take my results
and pick the best option for you. As I said, I am blessed to have lots of
family photos - the ones I used for my test are from my Aunt's 14th birthday
(my mother in the center dancing is only 12 years old, and these photos were
taken in Cuba). Whatever app you chose, or if you continue to use a flatbed
scanner, find any and all treasured photos that you are lucky enough to
have and make sure that you do take the time to scan them so that they
can be enjoyed by future generations.
Happy scrapping!
